Brad Parks - Eyes of the Innocent

It was all about financing. Merely reinvesting his own profits was only going to get Primo so far. Major developers needed major financing-big loans that allowed them to leverage thousands of dollars of assets into millions of dollars of liquidity. It was their lifeblood.

The problem was, no one with serious cash was looking to throw money at someone like Primo. Home rehabbers were seen as unshaven hicks in pickup trucks, fly-by-nighters who might just chuck it all and go fishing. Their trade was considered grubby, unglamorous, and, most damningly, untrustworthy.

No, the venture capitalists and investment bankers were looking for the new home builders. They wanted the beautiful renderings of the four-hundred-thousand-square-foot mixed-use retail/residential projects with the 240-unit condominium project next door. They wanted 3-D models complete with the little cars in the parking lots, four-color brochures printed on glossy paper, builders who had corporate offices and a professional feel. They wanted something they could sell with a straight face to their clients.

Yes, Primo had to get into new construction if he was to be taken seriously. Still, it was a very different business from rehabbing. And it brought with it a new layer of complexity. There were permits, licenses, a thousand different codes and guidelines governing everything from sewer hookups to the width of a stairwell tread.

It was all new for Primo. The rehab business was almost totally unregulated: it was virtually impossible to draw up any kind of ordinance that reined in the activities of a professional house flipper yet still made it possible for Joe Fixit to do renovations on his house. Legally, you couldn’t write a law that separated the two.

New home construction was different. Especially in a crowded state like New Jersey, every aspect was regulated and then overregulated. And it could quickly get you wrapped up in more red tape than you’d ever seen. In Newark’s City Hall they used industrial-sized spools of the stuff.

Some folks liked to blame the City Hall workers for this, perpetuating the myth of the lazy government employee. But that was absurd, akin to blaming a single tree because you couldn’t get through a forest. The truth was, Newark had been ruled by a succession of political machines for decades. Blacks, Italians, Irish, Jews-they all took their turns. And each machine contributed its own patronage hiring, adding one civil service position at a time until it created a bureaucracy that had become baffling even to the bureaucrats.

It frustrated Primo endlessly at first. But then he finally figured out the secret: to get through it, you needed to have a friend on the inside, someone who could pick up a phone and get the governmental mountain to move with a single word.

The only real issue was making sure you found the right friend.

I descended the staircase in three long strides and a jump, hitting the landing with both feet and bolting out the door. If I had given it a second’s thought, I probably wouldn’t have gone after her. Much like the proverbial dog chasing the car, I wouldn’t know what to do if I caught her.

But I wasn’t thinking at that point, just reacting. I burst into the backyard, which was small and fenced in on three sides. Akilah had chosen to go over the back fence and was just getting down the other side.

“Akilah, wait!” I shouted, which was probably stupid. If she felt like talking to me, she wouldn’t be making like this was the Urban Steeplechase World Championships. She sprinted through a narrow alleyway toward the front of the houses on the next street.

I tore off after her, more or less throwing myself over the back fence, showing all the grace of a wounded elephant. I landed awkwardly, stumbling as my ankle buckled but, thankfully, did not give way. I was able to right myself, then follow her down the alley into the next street.

I emerged in time to see Akilah rounding a corner and set my legs churning. In a game of chase, she had some advantages: this was her neighborhood, not mine; she was younger and thinner; and she was probably more motivated. But I still had longer legs and kept in decent enough shape from my regular-okay, semiregular-workouts that I could run a six-minute mile. So I knew I could reel her in. Eventually.

But I soon realized this wasn’t going to be a footrace, rather hide-and-seek. As I rounded the next corner, I caught a fleeting glance of her turning into a hulking brick apartment building. I followed her through a propped-open door into a large once-impressive lobby with marble floors and a chandelier hanging overhead. Straight in front of me, up a short flight of steps, was an elevator. But the numbered lights above it told me it was already on the fifth floor. No way Akilah had managed to go up that far in the fifteen seconds she had been inside.

Stairs. She had gone for the stairs. I found them to the left of the elevator shaft and shoved open the door. I could hear someone several flights away, running upward, panting.

“Akilah, I just want to talk,” I yelled as I launched up after her, taking steps three at a time. I could tell I was gaining ground. From above me, I heard a fire door opening. But which one? Fourth floor? Fifth? My thighs were burning by the time I got to the fourth floor and peeked out into the hallway. No Akilah. I went back to the stairs and galloped up another flight, leaning out the door for another look. This time I spied Akilah’s small body disappearing out a window at the end of a hallway onto a fire escape.

She took the time to shut the window, which was getting stuck on the layers of flaking paint that all but inhibited its function. I reached the windowsill, heaved the glass back open with one shove-it’s not my fault I’m bigger and stronger than her-and rolled out.

I was surprised to find her still on the fire escape when I got there.

I was somewhat less surprised to find she had pulled a knife.

I righted myself. We were perhaps ten feet apart. The knife didn’t scare me too much. But being five stories up sure did. The platform was made of that metal grating you can see through-I hate that stuff-and I fought a brief wave of panic as I realized I was sixty feet in the air on a rickety fire escape that probably hadn’t passed inspection in my lifetime.

“Don’t come closer,” she said wildly, slashing the air with the knife. “I’ll cut you.”

“Easy, easy,” I said. “Just take it easy.”

The knife was a threat but, truthfully, not much of one. Akilah weighed perhaps a hundred pounds and had a wingspan at least a foot shorter than mine. In order to really hurt someone with a knife, you have to either catch them off guard or overpower them physically-neither of which was going to happen here. Still, I didn’t want to get too close, putting us at something of an impasse.

“Stay right there!” she shrieked. “Don’t come no closer.”

“Okay. It’s okay,” I said, trying to make my voice sound calm. “No one’s going anywhere. We can just talk.”

“You don’t know nothing,” she said. “You don’t know nothing about my problems. You don’t have a clue.”

“Just relax, honey,” I said. But she wasn’t listening.

“This guy, he’s coming to get me. He burned down my house and now he’s trying to kill me just like he killed my babies.”

“Akilah, I’ve got no idea what you’re-”

“He’s crazy. Just crazy. He killed Boo. He killed my babies. He killed them! He killed them!”

“Akilah,” I said forcefully. “Listen to me: I’m not going to hurt you. I just want Sweet Thang’s jewelry back, okay?”